I wasn't sure about the source I received it from.
There are 3 things you need to do when you read something like this and want to make a first pass as evaluating it:
1. Check the publication source. This one was citing a publication in Phys. Rev. Lett. (they give you a link).
2. Then, go to our list of acceptable journals and see if Phys. Rev. Lett. is one of the journals. This will tell you whether this is a respectable journal, or some fly-by-night-and-accepts-anything-under-the-sun journal. In physics, Phys. Rev. Lett. is one of the top 3 most-prestigious journals for physics papers (the other 2 being Nature and Science).
3. And this is a separate issue. The question on whether it is "verified science" is completely different than figuring out if it has been properly published. Verification of anything in physics often requires time. For an experimental result, it requires that other people reproduce the same experiment, and even go beyond that (such as increasing the accuracy and sensitivity of the experiment). Publishing it first in a reputable journal is the first step in an often tedious process of verification.
If you do not have access to the PRL paper itself, check out the ArXiv upload:
There are 3 things you need to do when you read something like this and want to make a first pass as evaluating it:
1. Check the publication source. This one was citing a publication in Phys. Rev. Lett. (they give you a link).
2. Then, go to our list of acceptable journals and see if Phys. Rev. Lett. is one of the journals. This will tell you whether this is a respectable journal, or some fly-by-night-and-accepts-anything-under-the-sun journal. In physics, Phys. Rev. Lett. is one of the top 3 most-prestigious journals for physics papers (the other 2 being Nature and Science).
3. And this is a separate issue. The question on whether it is "verified science" is completely different than figuring out if it has been properly published. Verification of anything in physics often requires time. For an experimental result, it requires that other people reproduce the same experiment, and even go beyond that (such as increasing the accuracy and sensitivity of the experiment). Publishing it first in a reputable journal is the first step in an often tedious process of verification.
If you do not have access to the PRL paper itself, check out the ArXiv upload:
